Lotsman
Ryskayushchie art group
Interdisciplinary project: physical object, local computing system, ship's log, video
Lotsman explores a non-human way of seeing space — one that emerges between the environment, the machine and the human observer.
The project asks what happens to our orientation when we delegate part of it to a machine. Rather than replacing human perception, Lotsman observes the environment alongside us, producing another account of the journey — one shaped by sensors, data, errors and speculation.
Lotsman is a composite entity assembled from physical hardware, a camera, an audio recorder, a local computing system and code. It observes its surroundings through sensors and constructs its own account of what is happening, drawing simultaneously on measurable environmental data and on information with no verifiable basis.
Realised within the Arctic Biennale, the project travelled with the expedition from Murmansk to Barentsburg and Pyramiden, first aboard the research vessel Professor Molchanov, then on the boat Tsirkul, and continued working in Barentsburg. We recorded its operation throughout the route, collecting images, sound, movement data and other environmental parameters.
For Lotsman, the Arctic is not a setting but a condition in which the possibility of orientation is tested. The horizon disappears, the landscape repeats itself, light constantly changes, and position becomes difficult to establish. In what we call “white blindness”, familiar visual landmarks cease to function and machine vision begins to fail, producing noise, misrecognition and positioning errors.
We do not correct these errors. They become part of how Lotsman perceives. The image of the surroundings passes through machine analysis, after which the system produces a short observation record and a diary entry in its own voice. The image is then transformed, assembled into a page and printed during the expedition itself.
What emerges is a new kind of ship's log: not a documentary account of the route, but a record produced through a shared process of orientation. Measurement exists alongside speculation, observation alongside malfunction, and human perception alongside a non-human way of seeing space.
The log does not attempt to resolve uncertainty. Instead, it records the process of navigating through it — creating another way of relating to an environment that cannot be fully known or controlled.
Lotsman exists simultaneously as an object, an observer and an archive. Its journey survives in physical pages, images, data and video recordings. The archive remains open, allowing new observations to extend the log beyond the expedition itself.
Credits
Ryskayushchie art group: Yulia Nemova, Vadim Revin, Liza Ra, Darya Dogaeva
Base code: Liza Ra
Realised within the Arctic Biennale, Barentsburg, Svalbard, 2026
Operator: Arctic Biennale, Centre for the Art of Free Elements, Alexander Ponomarev
Shown at: Arctic. Pole of Colour, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 2026
Video: 1080 × 1920, 20 min
